You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychoanalytic contributions to the theory of group and organizational psychology have a puzzling quality. A few key theoretical contributions in this area occupy a territory somewhat peripheral to the mainstream of psychoanalysis, and most psychoanalysts tend to shy away from them. These contributions have nevertheless had a significant impact on the intellectual, scientific, and even political scenes. Their impact, however, has been limited in the field of organizational intervention, and there are good reasons for that: More about this later.
In what follows I present a brief overview of this field, with an emphasis on an area that seems to have received less attention than it merits—that of leaders of groups and organizations. The title of my article is intended to convey the sense of uncertainty and even danger that I have come to associate with attempts to apply psychoanalytically gained knowledge to large groups and organizations.
Freud (1921) initiated the psychoanalytic study of group processes, explaining them in terms of his then newly developed ego psychology. Freud understood the immediate sense of intimacy that individuals established with each other in mobs as derived from the projection of their ego ideal onto the leader, and their identification with him as well as with each other. The projection of the ego ideal onto the idealized leader eliminates moral constraints and the higher functions of self-criticism and responsibility that
are so importantly mediated by the superego. The sense of unity and belonging protects the members of the mob from losing their sense of identity, but it is accompanied by a severe reduction in ego functioning. As a result of all these developments, primitive, ordinarily unconscious needs take over and the mob functions under the sway of drives and affects, excitement and rage, stimulated and directed by the leader.
Freud linked these concepts with his hypotheses regarding the historical origin of the